http://www.diva-portal.org This is the published version of a paper published in Nordic Journal of Educational History. Citation for the original published paper (version of record): Larsen, C. (2017) A Diversity of Schools: The Danish School Acts of 1814 and the Emergence of Mass Schooling in Denmark. Nordic Journal of Educational History, 4(1): 3-28 Access to the published version may require subscription. N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published paper. Permanent link to this version: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-136800 Nordic Journal of Educational History Vol. 4, no. 1 (2017), pp. 3–28 ISSN (online): 2001-9076 ISSN (print): 2001-7766 A Diversity of Schools: The Danish School Acts of 1814 and the Emergence of Mass Schooling in Denmark Christian Larsen Abstract • During the nineteenth century, national systems of mass schooling were established in west- ern Europe. In Denmark, King Frederik VI passed a set of five schools’ laws in 1814: one for the village schools, one for the market town schools, one for Copenhagen, one for the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein and one for Jews, in order to create and regulate a system of mass schooling within his realms. This study aims to analyse the impact of the 1814 School Acts and thereby, the emergence of mass schooling in Denmark in the nineteenth century. Three aspects of the 1814 Acts are analysed in this article: firstly, how a local school administration was established; secondly, how new school buildings were built and thirdly, how a new form of teacher and a new teachers’ education was enacted at different stages across the King’s realm and countries, and with very different consequences. Keywords • Mass schooling, school acts, school administration, teacher education, new school build- ings Introduction In 1780, there were two schools in the parish of Magleby in the southern part of Sealand: one in Magleby and one in Stigsnæs.1 Combined, the schools had approx- imately 80 pupils in the 6–15 age-range. Around a quarter of the pupils attended school in Magleby, the rest in Stigsnæs. Søren Pind (1739–1811) was the headmaster at Stigsnæs School. He had no formal teacher training but this was not a require- ment. Pind started each day of teaching with a morning hymn from the Lutheran psalmbook and a prayer with the assembled children, who were kneeling during the prayer. At the end of the prayer, he would read a passage from the Bible after which the children would each continue where they had left off in their school books. Not all of the 60 pupils attended every day. During the spring and autumn, in particular, there was much agricultural work to attend to and the children were required to help their farming families. Because of that, many older children rarely attended school, only returning to revise during the winter, before their confirmations.2 The article is based on Christian Larsen, Erik Nørr and Pernille Sonne,Da skolen tog form: 1780–1850 [When Schools Were Shaped: 1780–1850], volume 2 of Ning de Coninck-Smith and Charlotte Appel, eds., “Dansk skolehistorie – hverdag, vilkår og visioner gennem 500 år” [Schools in Denmark: A Histo- ry of Everyday Life, Conditions, and Visions over 500 Years] (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2013). The project was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. The author of this article would like to thank his co-authors for permission to use their part of the book for the article, and the peer reviewers for valua- ble comments on early versions of this article. 1 The following is based on Johs. C. Jessen,Vester og Øster Flakkebjerg Herreds Skolehistorie (Copen- hagen: ASAs Forlag, 1938), 24–25, 166–70. 2 C. Larsen et al. (2013), 14. Christian Larsen is a Senior Researcher at The National Archives, Denmark. Email: [email protected] Nordic Journal of Educational History 2017. © Christian Larsen. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 4 Christian Larsen Returning to southern Sealand 70 years later, an observer of the scholastic con- ditions of 1780 would have observed great changes. Superficially, there were fine new school buildings. At Stigsnæs, a new school had been built in 1820 after the old building had burnt to the ground. From 1834 to 1871, the teacher at Stignæs was Niels Lerche (1797–1886), who was educated at the teacher training college in Jon- strup. At the school, approximately 80 children were now divided into two classes, the smaller children in the lower class and the older in the upper. The classes had alternating school attendance, as there was only one teacher.3 Many of the changes seen at the schools in the Magleby parish can also be ob- served in the other parts of the Danish realm. In several instances, it is possible to point to specific paragraphs in the Danish School Acts of 1814 as the cause of these similarities. The 1814 school legislation demonstrated a desire to make schools a part of state business for which the government took responsibility; it issued guide- lines for nearly all the conditions in a school, from personnel and curricula to build- ings and discipline. Figure 1. The drawing from 1957 is intended to give an impression of the conditions in a rural district school in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Source: Ejnar Poulsen, Viborg Amts skole- og degne- historie (Viborg: Ejnar Poulsen, 1957). Both before and after 1814, however, there were considerable differences between schools attended by children of diverse backgrounds and from different areas. Throughout the period, a fundamental divide between children from the towns and children from the countryside existed. This was the reason that a series of parallel acts were passed, instead of a single school act. Differences included the number of school days and the choice of subjects. Additionally, children of differing social clas- ses seldom attended the same school as the most privileged were educated separa- tely. Gender was the other major separating factor. This was particularly prominent in families who educated their children beyond the elementary level. Boys typically 3 Jessen (1938), 26–27. A Diversity of Schools 5 attended school for more years than their sisters and were educated in a wider range of subjects at different locations and by different teachers. The future role for girls was marriage; therefore they did not need education beyond an elementary level. There were also variations between the various realms of the Danish King. The school day was different in the German-speaking and commercially advanced towns of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, as it was on the remote Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic or on the heaths of West Jutland with poor soils. The situation for a teacher at a private school, for the sons of wealthy families in Copenhagen, was quite different from one teaching peasant children on the island of Bornholm or teaching slave children in the Danish West Indies. In this article, I will highlight and analyse the impact of the 1814 School Acts and thereby the emergence of mass schooling in Denmark in the nineteenth century. Both the general school reforms, as well as the specific implementations during the period 1780–1850, are analysed in order to explain how schools and schooling were shaped.4 To appreciate these changes and also the relevant contexts in the period 1780–1850, three aspects of the 1814 Acts affecting the daily life of schooling and the emergence of mass schooling are analysed: 1) how a local school administration was built, 2) how new school buildings were built, and 3) how a new form of teacher and a new teachers’ education was established. The focus will be on the rural districts, where almost 80 per cent of the population lived. Two analytical approaches will be used to show how different types of schools have existed and been shaped by people and their surroundings at different times. The diversity approach deals with the changing school landscapes and with all the different people involved in everyday school life. In this article, I highlight variations and exceptions in order to show how schooling was experienced and assessed in widely differing ways, depending on where and for whom schools were organised. Thestruggle approach is applied to show how the school was an arena of negotiations and conflicts, nationally and locally. This influenced on organising the local school administration, on the building of new schools, or how to be a good teacher. For ex- ample, building new schools was not only a question of economy; it also depended on local traditions, negotiations over the layout of the school building, and conflicts between the local officials and the taxpayers. In older historical portrayals of the Danish school, the changes in the period from 1780 to 1850 have often been interpreted in the light of two closely related con- ditions: first, the impact of new educational trends and secondly, the 1814 school legislation. To a great extent, the history of Danish schools has been seen as a history of pro- gress. In ancient times, there were few schools and they were in a poor condition. However, the 1780s and 1790s brought new ideals and with them, reforms; this re- sulted in the School Act of 1814 and the creation of a unified, centrally organised Danish school system. In this context, the 1814 School Act, which among other things ruled that all children should have seven years of schooling, became a land- 4 The study is based on a large amount of printed and unprinted materials, see C.